


forsaking all the rest

by tsunderestorm



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Female My Unit | Byleth, Ficlet, Oral Sex, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:48:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22472845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: The students love her, and she’s available for anything they need whenever they might need her...Except on Sundays.Sundays are for Edelgard.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 6
Kudos: 225





	forsaking all the rest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paperwing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperwing/gifts).



> I asked for prompts on my [twitter](twitter.com/tsunderestorm) and tiff asked for edeleth (with fem!byleth) and the prompt "do you trust me?".
> 
> This is sort of a canon divergence-thing, wherein Byleth leads the Blue Lions and ends up defecting for Edelgard.
> 
> And before you all get excited, the oral is only just a _teensy_ bit at the end.

The way that Edelgard’s face falls when Byleth walks past her to assume her post at the front of the Blue Lions’ classroom will stay imprinted in her memory for eternity: the shock, the sadness, the shield she raises to protect her heart, the steel of her face as she sets it. Impassive, unaffected. “I was hoping you’d serve the empire,” she says softly, sadly and turning towards her own classroom with a twirl of her cape she cautions, “Soon, you’ll wish you had chosen to lead our house instead.”

As all of the Lions reintroduce themselves and develop goals, the guilt eats Byleth alive as she wonders if she already does.

\--

Byleth is never neglectful of her students. She sits down for breakfast each morning with Dimitri, accepts Felix’s invitations to spar, and slowly but surely earns Dedue’s trust to help tend to the plants in the greenhouse. Annette beams like the sun when she masters a spell that Byleth has taught her, and she rejects Sylvain’s amorous flirtations with the right blend of tentative kindness and finality. Ashe chirps endearing anecdotes as they walk through the market and Mercedes sings her lullabies as she heals her bruises from their practice battles. 

When her father asks, she tells him the truth: it’s going well. Although she had harbored her doubts at first, she has adjusted well. The students love her, and she’s available for anything they need whenever they might need her...

Except on Sundays. 

Sundays are for Edelgard. Sundays are for bergamot tea and the breezy brush of the freshly clipped hedges surrounding their momentary private paradise, for the smell of Edelgard’s perfume lingering on Byleth’s clothes: a spicy blend of vetiver and neroli. For the briefest touch of her bare hand across the tabletop, chaste and demure before she places it back in her lap and giggles, “My teacher…”

Byleth wishes that she had more time for Edelgard, for their beautiful, blossoming friendship. For helping her to hone her already impressive heavy axe skills, for sitting side-by-side poring over a book of reason spells, hidden from the world behind the curtain fall of their hair. For getting to know the young woman who is both a brazen and powerful princess and a frightened little girl. 

For healing the hurt that Edelgard confesses to her one night fresh from a nightmare, soothing the scars that her imprisonment have branded onto both her body and soul. 

It’s not that she _regrets_ telling Rhea _Blue Lions_ when she’d asked which house she’d felt drawn to leading. It’s just that, while her assumption that the Lions had, as a whole, needed her most was correct… Edelgard needed her so, so much. Much more, in some ways. 

“My teacher,” Edelgard begins as she takes a delicate sip of tea (Crescent Moon, today - a gift from Hubert) and smiles, “may I confide something in you?” 

_Yes_ , Byleth thinks. _Yes, Edelgard, you can tell me anything_. She nods, raising her own cup to her lips and breathing deep the subtle notes earthy herbs blended into the drink.

“I think…” Edelgard begins again, blushing and covering her mouth with her hand before she can continue, “I think, instead of ‘Edelgard’, it would make me very happy if you called me simply ‘El’.”

\--

Edelgard catches Byleth on her way into the Lions’ classroom, ducks her into an alcove out of Dimitri’s keen eyes and Claude’s forever-pricked ears. “My teacher,” she prefaces, breathless, “would you travel to Enbarr with me?” 

Byleth wants to ask _why_ , but Edelgard is not exactly forthcoming with details. All she offers when Byleth asks is, “Do you trust me?”

\--

In the tomb, Byleth doesn’t have time to wonder if she’s making the right decision. She has time to weigh the options, to give an order, to answer a question… the archbishop’s 

“I have to kill Edelgard...” Byleth says, and she realizes only when the smug, sinister smile twists its way across Rhea’s immaculate face that she’s made the wrong decision. She looks to Edelgard and sees, for the second time, her downfallen face and the heavy stone walls she builds back up around her heart. She steps away from the archbishop and toward Edelgard, clad in the long, dark robes of the Flame Emperor, and finishes, “... if I stay with you, Rhea, and that’s _not_ something I’m doing.”

Byleth pulls Edelgard close, sees the shock register in her lilac eyes, and suddenly those stone walls she’d built up brick by brick just seconds before don’t seem as high or threatening. Edelgard in her arms, jagged bone-sword pointed at Rhea to betray her the same way she’s betraying Dimitri and all of the Blue Lions, she whispers, “Do you trust me?”

“I trust you, my teacher,” Edelgard vows. 

\--

When the broken stones have finished shifting and dust has settled, when the smoke has cleared and they’ve won, they can’t find Byleth anywhere. It’s like she has vanished. It seems as if no one in all of vast Fodlan has seen her, and they’ve cleared enough of the fallen rubble to find the last crushed corpse, and hers is nowhere among them. 

Duty first and her heart second, Edelgard leaves for Adrestia… but she does not forget. How could she? She’s always had nightmares; flashes of memories and fabrications, her siblings being tortured, going mad, dying at the hands of nobles greedy to play at being gods. Nightmares are no stranger to her nighttime, but these are new - Byleth, cut and bloodied. Byleth, left at the mercy of what remains of Garreg Mach’s brainwashed Knights. Byleth, head separated from her shoulders by Dimitri’s lance or Byleth, skin chewed off of her bones, eyes eaten by rats...

She wakes up screaming, and it’s always Hubert who’s there with a candle and a caring touch “We will find the Professor, Lady Edelgard,” he assures, rubbing her back with dry, blackened fingers. “Sleep, my Lady.”

\--

“I thought you were never coming back…” Edelgard sobs, pressing her face into Byleth’s shoulder. Everything has led up to this… their house’s promise to meet in five years for the festival and their inability to find the body of her beloved teacher have slotted the pieces into place.

“Why wouldn’t I come back?” Byleth asks with a cheeky grin, and pulls Edelgard into her arms. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Yes, my teacher,” Edelgard sobs. It’s the first time she’s let herself cry in tears. “Yes, I trust you.”

\--

When the war is won, they are wedded beneath the Garland Moon white flowers in their hair. Edelgard wears a red gown with a high neckline and a daring low back that Dorothea has talked her into, a gauzy black shawl draped over her shoulders that no longer have to carry the weight of the world. Byleth wears black without a hint of anything solemn or somber, elegant with her red gloves and dramatic low-cut bodice. She divests herself of her own gloves and slips the gloves off Edelgard’s hands with the same tender touches that first made her fall for her all those years ago in the garden and onto her finger, she slides a ring. A promise, a vow. They’ve walked through hell and come out together. 

The officiator ties their hands with a piece of purple velvet, and asks, “Do you, Your Imperial Majesty, Edelgard of Adrestia, the First of Her Name, accept this woman as your partner in love and life until the end of days?” 

Edelgard turns to look at Byleth. She smiles, and all of her worries wash away: the light that shines on her life. 

“Do you, Imperial Consort to Her Imperial Majesty, take our nation’s Empress to be your partner in love and life until the end of days?”

Byleth pauses for a moment, pretending to consider the opportunity. Edelgard tilts her head just so to the side, brows furrowing her disapproval, and Byleth barely keeps her face straight as she teases, “Do you trust me?” 

\--

“No one saw us,” Byleth insists as she’s leading Edelgard into Enbarr’s palace gardens despite her protests. 

“Byleth...” Edelgard says, laughing when she’s tugged around a corner, “it’s _our_ wedding. Don’t you think people will notice if we’re absent?” 

Edelgard has to admit: she’s probably right. They’re several hours in to their wedding reception and Dorothea is half-drunk on sweet wine and making up the lyrics to the opera she’s writing about Edelgard on the spot. Last she’s seen, Hubert is attempting to coax Bernadetta out of the corner that she’s hidden herself in with a piece of cake. 

“Do you want to go back?” Byleth asks before she stops, pivots on her heel and turns to face her, smoothing her hands up Edelgard’s arms and then low around her waist to pull her close. She puts two fingers beneath her chin and gently tips her face up, searching her orchid eyes and finding only adoration. “I just wanted some time with my wife where all of our friends and half the Adrestian court wasn’t watching our every move.”

“I love you,” Edelgard answers. “My teacher, my dearest friend… my partner, my lover.”

“My empress,” they say in unison, and Edelgard smiles, tears in her eyes. Reassured, she drags Byleth behind a shrub clipped in the shape of an eagle, to what appears to be a dead end in the garden’s labyrinth. Edelgard is almost… _giggling_ , as she’s pulling Byleth close.

Testing the waters, relaxed and playful, she whispers, “Do you trust me?” 

Byleth has followed her into battle, all over Fodlan and into the dark, damp secrets beneath the ground to eradicate that which had hurt her love. She’d follow her to the ends of the earth. She nods, and Edelgard steps through a carefully-hidden gap in the hedges and into an empty clearing that Byleth has never seen. 

She’s on her in a moment, kissing her with unbridled passion until her wife is no longer _Edelgard_ , but _El_ , melting in her arms and moaning into the kiss. She whimpers when Byleth gets a hand up under her skirts, pushing aside her panties and thumbing over her clit as her tongue tastes every corner of her mouth that she’s already memorized by heart. She’s wet from their earlier kisses, slippery against Byleth’s fingers when she circles her hole.

“B…yleth!” Edelgard half moans, half scolds as Byleth circles her clit. “Anyone… this is… improper!”

Byleth doesn’t often kiss Edelgard to hush her. In fact, that almost never happens, not when she values each and every word that comes from her soft, pink lips, but this time she does. Mouth over Edelgard’s, tongue slipping once more between her lips and coaxing hers out, sighing softly as her fingers move beneath her skirts, touching her just right.

“So’s this,” Byleth says with a cheeky grin, pressing Edelgard’s bunched-up skirts into her hands and kneeling down on the ground skirt pooling around her. She skitters fingers up Edelgard’s pale, scarred thighs and lifts her wife’s leg over her shoulder to better fasten her mouth over her clit and suck. She wants to add _but I don’t see you complaining_ but, well, her mouth is a bit busy at the moment, teasing her clit and delving her tongue into her until she’s shaking. 

It’s no time at all before Edelgard is coming on Byleth’s face, grinding her pussy against her mouth and tongue, gloves askew from grabbing at her hair and knees and thighs quivering with the effort of holding herself up as the pleasure rocks through her. It isn’t enough, not when she sometimes feels as if the emptiness in her body, her heart, her _soul_ will consume her if she doesn’t spend every waking moment touching Byleth in some way. 

Byleth fixes Edelgard’s panties, kissing each pale thigh before rising to her feet and teasing, “We need to return to our reception, El…” 

She’s tugging Edelgard back through the gap in the hedges before she can even fix her rumpled skirts. 


End file.
